120 THE OPEN BOOK OF NATURE 
of learning botanical terms, as I think I shall manage 
to show you. 
Without further preamble we will dive right into 
the thick of our subject. Iam going to give you an 
account of the principal terms which are applied to 
the different parts of a flowering plant. 
THE Root.—Is usually a tuft of fibres, each fibre 
being provided with a porous tip by which it absorbs 
food in liquid form from the soil. These fibres often 
radiate from a thickened portion of the root known 
as the main or tap root. The fibres are called 
rootlets. The following are some of the chief kinds 
of roots : 
1. The Bulb.—A solid globular mass of substance, 
which produces rootlets from beneath, and leaves, 
etc., from above. The root of the Onion is a 
bulb. 
2. The Corm.—A root like that of a Crocus. Un- 
like that of the Onion, which has circles within circles 
which can be peeled off, the corm is “all of a 
piece.”’ 
3. The Tuber.—A root which has one or more 
masses of substance, usually roundish in shape, 
which can produce other plants. Example: The 
Potato (Plate 51, c). 
4. The Spindle-shaped Root.—Examples : Carrot 
and Beet. 
5. The Creeping Root.—Example: The Great 
Bindweed. 
6. Aerial Roots——Roots which appear above- 
ground. Example: The rootlets springing from 
stems of ivy, by which the plant clings to trunks of 
trees or walls. 
